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boys." Her eyes flicked over me; I was still in the little bathing suit. "Perhaps you can take a quick shower and get dressed first."

"You're going out?" I gasped. "But you just got home!"

"I got home over an hour ago," she said evenly. "You weren't here."

Because you made me take your kids to the beach,
I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

I had ten minutes to shower and change into shorts and a T-shirt--uninspired but there was no time to spare. Then I was back on duty. The boys refused to take naps. That shouldn't have surprised me, but it did, somehow. Finally, I settled them on the white couch with sippy cups and blankets and turned on the Disney Channel. I slipped back to my room and dove onto the bed. I shut my eyes and lay there for maybe five minutes before Cameron came to tell me he had spilled milk on the couch (which he pronounced "cow-ouch").

"But it was a no-spill cup!"

He wrinkled his nose and swallowed a sob. "I took the top off."

"No big deal. Milk's white, the couch is white," I said, forgetting for a moment that the boys drank only chocolate milk.

Once I'd blotted the spilled milk, flipped over the couch cushion and fought with Cameron over whether or not he could have another chocolate milk (he won), I headed back to my room.

Consuela was pulling the sheets off of my bed.

I yelped. She gave me a dirty look and then went back to yanking off the sheets.

"I was going to take a nap," I explained.

"This late?" she said. It was 5:20. Time was running out. My

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mother left work at six o'clock. I had to get to sleep--and get back into my own body-- and I had to do it soon.

"Where are the extra sheets?" I asked. "I'll make up the bed."

"No extras," she said.

"None?"

"Is a rental."

She dumped the sheets in a laundry basket and hauled it into the hall. I smoothed the comforter back on top of the bed. I was about to lie down when Consuela reappeared with the vacuum cleaner and a mean smirk. She turned on the vacuum. It was a nice machine, a lot quieter than the one we have at home (I've been stuck with vacuum duty since I was ten). Still, it was clear: I would not be napping.

"I need to go out," I announced.

She narrowed her eyes. "You got a date?" I glared at her. You'd think she'd get some new material.

I put a hand on my abdomen and winced. "Cramps. I need to go to the drugstore. The boys are just watching TV."

She shrugged. "Mrs. Sealy, she don't like you leaving."

"I won't be gone long."

Evelyn was pacing in front of my house. "Where have you been?"

"I couldn't sleep. I tried, but they wouldn't let me. How am I? I mean, how's Larissa?"

Evelyn rolled her eyes. "Whiny. Sullen. Keeps saying she's sick of this dream and wants to wake up."

"Did the Benadryl work?"

"For a little while."

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"Give her more," I said. "I'll pull out some more pills." From the corner of my eye, I could see a neighbor coming down the street. I slipped around the back of the house before he could wonder why a beautiful blond girl was standing on my front porch talking to herself. I let myself in the back door, Evelyn following soundlessly.

Upstairs, the door to my bedroom was open a crack. A girl lay on my bed crying. She was me but not me. No one really knows what she looks like to other people, but I've seen enough pictures and I've felt my face move. Her expressions were not mine. I couldn't imagine that anyone would ever believe she was me-- but then, no one had questioned that I was her. Her hair was loose and greasy and falling in her face. She was still wearing the jeans and fake-layered top I'd fallen asleep in. They didn't look nearly as hot as I'd thought they did.

After putting a couple more Benadryl on the bathroom counter, I tiptoed back down the stairs, my breathing coming fast.

"Well?" Evelyn asked.

I pictured myself upstairs. "Are my shoulders really that big?"

She didn't answer, which I took as a yes.

I grabbed the pad and pen next to the phone.

Mom,

Got a headache & went to bed. Please don't wake me up.

See you in the morning.

Love,

Claire

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I stared at the pad, surprised. Even though it came from Larissa's hand, the handwriting was my own, upright and plain.

Next up: stalling my mother. I called the clinic and took a deep breath. "This is Marjorie Humphrey--Mary Humphrey's daughter? I know it's late, but my mother is complaining of chest pains and really needs to see Dr. Martin." I sounded appropriately panicked--not difficult to do at this point.

And then: "Yes, I know she should go to the emergency room, but she refuses. And if I call nine-one-one, she'll lock herself in her bedroom."

Mary Humphrey has been my mother's patient since before I was born. She has medical "emergencies" at least twice a month and has said she'd rather die in bed than go to the hospital. If my mother had still been at the clinic, she would have waited hours for Mary Humphrey. But my mother had already left.

Next, I tried her cell phone, trying to remember which patients she had (foolishly) given the number to. But when her voice mail picked up, I disconnected.

"My mother's on her way home!" I told Evelyn. "Tell Larissa to take that Benadryl--now!"

My mother was pulling into the driveway just as I rounded the side of my house.

"Hello." She smiled, obviously assuming I was a friend of her daughter's.

"Hi." I blinked nervously, believing for an instant that my mother would know me, that she would look into Larissa's eyes and see my soul.

"I'm Dr. Martin," she said. "And you're ... ?"

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"Larissa. I'm staying nearby. Babysitting for the summer. I met Claire on the beach." I tried to think of more to say--anything to keep her out of that house--but my head was buzzing from fear and nothing would come.

"Is Claire home?"

I nodded. "But she has a headache, so she went to bed." My mother frowned with concern. "I'd better go check on her then."

"No!"

She looked at me. I swallowed. "I mean--well, she said she just wanted to be alone. To sleep. I don't think you should wake her up."

My mother began to move toward the door with purpose. "Wait!" I said.

She looked at me. I tried to think of a way to stall her, ingeniously blinking, clearing my throat, and saying "um" several times. That killed at least four seconds.

She rose her eyebrows as if to say, "Well?"

My eyes fell on the lavender plants that lined the front walk. In the spring they were covered with bees.

"Ouch!" I yelped, grabbing my skinny arm.

"What's wrong?"

"Ohhhh!" I moaned. "Owww!"

"What is it?" She hurried toward me.

"Bee sting!" I gasped.

"You want me to get you some ice?"

I shook my head. "I'm allergic!"

"Do you have an EpiPen?" she asked, as I'd known she would.

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I shook my head. "Forgot it. Lost it." I began to whimper.

"It's okay," she said calmly. "I'm a doctor. I can take you to my clinic, give you a shot."

I nodded, speechless with relief: Sometimes my mother carried a spare EpiPen in her car or her purse, in which case I was fully prepared to transition into a fake asthma attack.

"I'll just tell my daughter where we're going," she said.

"No!" I clutched my neck. "It's getting hard to breathe," I said in a strangled voice. Forget the swim team: I should try out for the school play.

I
should have gone with the asthma attack,
I thought as, fifteen minutes later, my mother jabbed a needle into my fat-free thigh. An asthma attack would have meant a nice little breathing treatment. A shot of epinephrine was going to make me feel like I'd just downed five cups of coffee. Plus, that needle really hurt.

"Do you want to call your parents?" my mother asked.

I shifted my weight on the examining table and shook my head. "Mom's on a cruise. Dad's--" Oh, crap, where was Dad anyway? "I'm not allowed to talk to Dad until October."

She nodded without surprise. "Is there any adult I can call? Normally, I'd need an adult's permission to treat you, but of course there wasn't time."

"I'm just babysitting." I pictured Mrs. Sealy. "But I don't think anyone has any kind of legal control over me. Just my mom, and she's not around."

My mother nodded, considering. "Well, I need to make up a report about you, at least." She logged on to the computer (every exam room has one) and hit a few keys. "We create a file

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for anyone who comes through here."

She filled in my name. (Fortunately, I'd seen Larissa's last name, Hughes, on those envelopes in her dresser.) When I told her my birth date---keeping my voice as casual as possible--she exclaimed, "You and Claire were born on the same day!"

"Really?" I said. "Wow. I guess it explains why we were, you know. Drawn to each other."

She needed my weight for her records. I stepped on the scale and said, "Whoa!" when the number came up.

"Are you always this thin?" she asked gently.

"Oh, no," I said as if that were an absurd idea (which for me it is). "I had this really bad stomach bug a couple of weeks ago? I guess I dropped more weight than I realized."

She wanted to call Mrs. Sealy, but when I swore for the third time that I didn't know her phone number (I really didn't), she called the rental company for the house information. The rental company was closed, so she called the real-estate agent at home. The real-estate agent has been coming to my mother for years. The real-estate agent suffers from hypertension and kidney stones.

Consuela answered the phone. Mrs. Sealy wasn't home yet, she told my mother. Consuela was unimpressed with my brush with death.

My mother drove me back to the Ice Cube House. I checked the clock on her dashboard: It was almost eight o'clock.

"Won't you come in?" I asked, honestly hoping she'd say yes. It wasn't just that I wanted to keep her away from our house as long as possible. My mother was the first person who

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had been kind to me since I'd become Larissa. Well, besides Nate, anyway.

"Thanks, but I need to get home to Claire." Claire. If she had taken the Benadryl, she should be fast asleep by now. My mother scribbled something on a piece of paper. "This is my home number. Call me if you have any more problems. You have the extra EpiPen and the prescription I gave you?"

I nodded.

She squeezed my hand and held my eyes. "Good luck, Larissa. Take care of yourself."

Oddly, I felt my eyes fill with tears. My mother was sitting right next to me, but I missed her terribly. All these years, I'd suspected that she cared more about her patients than she did about me. But now I saw the way she looked at Larissa, with care and concern and a thousand good intentions. I wanted desperately to see love in her eyes. I now realized that she looked at only one person that way: me.

I blinked twice and said good-bye. My mother waited until I'd disappeared into the blocky white house, and then she drove home to her sleeping daughter.

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***

16

Cameron and Prescott were in bed , fast asleep. Consuela was gone--probably off at the store buying eye of newt or a flying broom. Mrs. Sealy was home, as perhaps she had been when my mother had called, sitting out on the deck with a glass of white wine, staring at the ocean.

I pulled open the slider and stepped out onto the deck. The air was tingly with cold; a fog was rolling in. The sky was that purplish black color it gets just after sunset. Below us, the waves crashed and pulled back in a soothing, endless rhythm.

"I'm back," I said.

Mrs. Sealy turned her head and nodded. Her eyes looked oddly distant. "Everything okay?" she asked.

"Yes." I was sure she'd ask me where I'd been, why I'd left her boys again.

"I didn't know you were allergic to bees," she said instead. "Neither did I."

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I waited for her to say something else, to express anger or concern: something, anything.

The waves crashed. The moon reflected a long white pathway on the ocean, as if beckoning us to follow.

"I think I'll go to bed," I announced.

Mrs. Sealy didn't respond.

All I wanted was to sleep and drift back to my own body, my own life, but the epinephrine shot left me feeling jittery. After lying in the dark for a half hour, my pulse racing in my ears, I finally turned on the light. There wasn't much to do in this room--no books, no television, no computer--but I didn't want to go into the main room and risk running into Mrs. Sealy.

I opened the top dresser drawer and pulled out Larissa's letters. There was the birthday card from her father, plus some envelopes. The top envelope just said "Krystal" where the full return address ought to be. I opened it up and slipped out yet another birthday card.